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I have just arrived home from The Great Dorset Steam Fair (GDSF), thoroughly exhausted and very dusty. It was however a wonderful event to attend, perhaps even more so this year than in recent years. For a start the weather was superb, then the plant working was in such a prominent position in the north field in-between the arena 2 and 4 and with such interesting machines working the crowd didn’t just walk by, they stood and watched. Roger Munt and his team have certainly put this section on the map, supported by a great cast of machines of all ages and types. We loved the Cleveland 247 trencher with its International 130 engine, which was certainly a crowd pleaser, as was the mighty 1931 Ruston-Bucyrus No4 shovels working together for the very first time. These 82-year-old machines were the latest technology at the time, being relatively lightweight and were value for money, making them the world market-leader then. They are not the easiest to drive as they are the opposite way around compared to a more modern cable excavator. I would love to hear from you if you know of any cable excavators still working for a living in the UK and Republic of Ireland, are there any left? The show stopper at Dorset was without doubt the special roller display entitled ‘The Greatest Ever Gathering of Rollers in the World’ and it lived up to that. The marquee looked after so well by the Road Roller Association, featured many gems from makers across the world. Outside it was brilliant too, with lots of i/c machines along with steam rollers from all over the globe. As for the most desirable, well that was the compound Breda from Italy, which lives in Germany and was making its rally debut after a very extensive restoration. In the internal combustion stakes that just had to be the oldest Marshall i/c roller possibly in the world dating from 1927/8 carrying an S-type two-stroke single-cylinder engine.